“Tto alii tthreee offyyou I ggive mmy ccommandd,” Mrs. Which said. “Ggo ddownn innttoo tthee ttownn. Ggo ttogetherr. Ddoo nnott llett tthemm ssepparate yyou. Bbee sstrongg.” There was a flicker and then it vanished. Meg shivered.
Mrs. Whatsit must have seen the shiver, for she patted Meg on the shoulder. Then she turned to Calvin. “Take care of Meg.”
“I can take care of Meg,” Charles Wallace said rather sharply. “I always have.”
Mrs. Whatsit looked at Charles Wallace, and the creaky voice seemed somehow both to soften and to deepen at the same time. “Charles Wallace, the danger here is greatest for you.”
“Why?”
“Because of what you are. Just exactly because of what you are you will be by far the most vulnerable. You must stay with Meg and Calvin. You must not go off on your own. Beware of pride and arrogance, Charles, for they may betray you.”
At the tone of Mrs. Whatsifs voice, both warning and frightening, Meg shivered again. And Charles Wallace butted up against Mrs. Whatsit in the way he often did with his mother, whispering, “Now I think I know what you meant about being afraid.”
“Only a fool is not afraid,” Mrs. Whatsit told him. “Now go.” And where she had been there was only sky and grasses and a small rock.
“Come on,” Meg said impatiently. “Come on, Let’s go!” She was completely unaware that her voice was trembling like an aspen leaf. She took Charles Wallace and Calvin each by the hand and started down the hill.
Below them the town was laid out in harsh angular patterns. The houses in the outskirts were all exactly alike, small square boxes painted gray. Each had a small, rectangular plot of lawn in front, with a straight line of dull-looking flowers edging the path to the door. Meg had a feeling that if she could count the flowers there would be exactly the same number for each house. In front of all the houses children were playing. Some were skipping rope, some were bouncing balls. Meg felt vaguely that something was wrong with their play. It seemed exactly like children playing around any housing development at home, and yet there was something different about it. She looked at Calvin, and saw that he, too, was puzzled.
“Look!” Charles Wallace said suddenly. “They’re skipping and bouncing in rhythm! Everyone’s doing it at exactly the same moment.”
This was so. As the skipping rope hit the pavement, so did the ball. As the rope curved over the head of the jumping child, the child with the ball caught the ball. Down came the ropes. Down came the balls. Over and over again. Up. Down. All in rhythm. All identical. Like the houses. Like the paths. Like the flowers.
Then the doors of all the houses opened simultaneously, and out came women like a row of paper dolls. The print of their dresses was different, but they all gave the appearance of being the same. Each woman stood on the steps of her house. Each clapped. Each child with the ball caught the ball. Each child with the skipping rope folded the rope.
Each child turned and walked into the house. The doors clicked shut behind them.
“How can they do it?” Meg asked wonderingly. “We couldn’t do it that way if we tried. What does it mean?”
“Let’s go back.” Calvin’s voice was urgent.
“Back?” Charles Wallace asked. “Where?”
“I don’t know. Anywhere. Back to the hill. Back to Mrs. Whatsit and Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which. I don’t like this.”
“But they aren’t there. Do you think they’d come to us if we turned back now?”
“I don’t like it,” Calvin said again.
“Come on.” Impatience made Meg squeak. “You know we can’t go back. Mrs. Whatsit said to go into the town.” She started on down the street, and the two boys followed her. The houses, all identical, continued, as far as the eye could reach.
Then, all at once, they saw the same thing, and stopped to watch. In front of one of the houses stood a little boy with a ball, and he was bouncing it. But he bounced it rather badly and with no particular rhythm, sometimes dropping it and running after it with awkward, furtive leaps, sometimes throwing it up into the air and trying to catch it. The door of his house opened and out ran one of the mother figures. She looked wildly up and down the street, saw the children and put her hand to her mouth as though to stifle a scream, grabbed the little boy and rushed indoors with him. The ball dropped from his fingers and rolled out into the street.
Charles Wallace ran after it and picked it up, holding it out for Meg and Calvin to see. It seemed like a perfectly ordinary, brown rubber ball.
“Let’s take it in to him and see what happens,” Charles Wallace suggested.
Meg pulled at him. “Mrs. Whatsit said for us to go on into the town.”
“Well, we are in the town, aren’t we? The outskirts anyhow. I want to know more about this. I have a hunch it may help us later. You go on if you don’t want to come with me.”
“No,” Calvin said firmly. “We’re going to stay together. Mrs. Whatsit said we weren’t to let them separate us. But I’m with you on this. Let’s knock and see what happens.”
They went up the path to the house, Meg reluctant, eager to get on into the town. “Let’s hurry,” she begged, please! Don’t you want to find Father?”
“Yes,” Charles Wallace said, “but not blindly. How can we help him if we don’t know what we’re up against? And it’s obvious we’ve been brought here to help him, not just to find him.” He walked briskly up the steps and knocked at the door. They waited. Nothing happened. Then Charles Wallace saw a bell, and this he rang. They could hear the bell buzzing in the house, and the sound of it echoed down the street. After a moment the mother figure opened the door. All up and down the street other doors opened, but only a crack, and eyes peered toward the three children and the woman looking fearfully out the door at them.
“What do you want?” she asked. “It isn’t paper time yet; we’ve had milk time; we’ve had this month’s Puller Prushio Person; and I’ve given my Decency Donations regularly. All my papers are in order.”
“I think your little boy dropped his ball,” Charles Wallace said, holding it out.
The woman pushed the ball away. “Oh, no! The children in our section never drop balls! They’re all perfectly trained. We haven’t had an Aberration for three years.”
All up and down the block, heads nodded in agreement.
Charles Wallace moved closer to the woman and looked past her into the house. Behind her in the shadows he could see the little boy, who must have been about his own age.
“You can’t come in,” the woman said. “You haven’t shown me any papers. I don’t have to let you in if you haven’t any papers.”
Charles Wallace held the ball out beyond the woman so that the little boy could see it. Quick as a flash the boy leaped forward and grabbed the ball from Charles Wallace’s hand, then darted back into the shadows. The woman went very white, opened her mouth as though to say something. then slammed the door in their faces instead. All up and down the street doors slammed.
“What are they afraid of?” Charles Wallace asked. ”What’s the matter with them?”
“Don’t you know?” Meg asked him. “‘Don’t you know what all this is about, Charles?”
“Not yet,” Charles Wallace said. “Not even an inkling. And I’m trying. But I didn’t get through anywhere. Not even a chink. Let’s go.” He stumped down the steps.
After several blocks the houses gave way to apartment buildings; at least Meg felt sure that that was what they must be. They were fairly tall, rectangular buildings, absolutely plain, each window, each entrance exactly like every other. Then, coming toward them down the street, was a boy about Calvin’s age riding a machine that was something like a combination of a bicycle and a motorcycle. It had the slimness and lightness of a bicycle, and yet as the foot pedals turned they seemed to generate an unseen source of power, so that the boy could pedal very slowly and yet move along the street quite swiftly. As he reached each entrance he thrust one hand into a bag he wore slung over his shoulder, pulled out a roll of papers, and tossed it into the entrance. It might have been Dennys or Sandy or any one of hundreds of boys with a newspaper route in any one of hundreds of towns back home, and yet, as with the children playing ball and jumping rope, there was something wrong about it. The rhythm of the gesture never varied. The paper flew in identically the same arc at each doorway, landed in identically the same spot. It was impossible for anybody to throw with such consistent perfection.